Edwin Kaplan

Edwin Kaplan, viola

Violist of the award-winning Tesla Quartet, Edwin Kaplan continues to forge a versatile identity as a recitalist, chamber musician, and educator. He has performed on concert series across the United States, including Festival Mozaic in San Luis Obispo, the La Jolla Chamber Music Society, the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C., Lyrica Chamber Music, Tanglewood, Colorado College Summer Music Festival, Kneisel Hall, and with the Burlington Ensemble of Vermont. He has collaborated with such esteemed artists as Paul Coletti, Lawrence Dutton, Richard O'Neill, Walter Ponce, Scott Yoo and the American String Quartet. Recent engagements with the Tesla Quartet include a London debut at Wigmore Hall.

Pushing his boundaries beyond the traditional repertoire, Edwin is equally at home in new music, having participated in numerous premieres, including Andy Akiho's LIgNEouS. In 2013 he performed a unique arrangement of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moonfor amplified string quartet and voice at Los Angeles' Levitt Pavilion to critical acclaim, and follows on that success with a West Coast tour featuring music by the Beatles the following year.

Edwin is proud to serve his community as an advocate for music education. He is on the faculty of the Thurnauer School of Music, directed by Dorothy Roffman, where he instructs arts-focused teenagers in violin and viola performance. Through his work at Thurnauer, as well as with the Shattered Glass Ensemble and the Tesla Quartet, Edwin performs outreach at community primary schools and has given master classes at universities in Georgia and Missouri. Edwin believes strongly in music education at all levels and has even participated in adult amateur chamber music workshops at Kneisel Hall in Blue Hill, ME, where he has brought in-depth coaching and musical training to adults for whom music is a passion and hobby.

Edwin holds a Master of Music degree and an Artist Diploma from the Yale University School of Music, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Lawrence Dutton.